And another New Cafe Article

Dartanbeck

Major Production - My Production
By Carrara Enthusiast Dartanbeck
In this article I share a bit of my thoughts around how I plan to get my elusive epic production done in Carrara. Some tips and tricks and considerations that will hopefully inspire some of our new users into using more of Carrara to help get their project out the door, and just to pass along some of the realizations that I've made over the past few years working on my sets.

I was actually really busy producing a lot of animated renders recently in the hopes of producing a bit of a trailer, so that I could pull some of this stuff out of the vault, and onto the public screen. Well now I'm at a bit of a halt, since I'm having so much fun testing and creating for Genesis 2 Males and Females. Yes, I really like my Generation 4 main hero actors. But the new shapes of these new Genesis 2 figures has me wanting to go back on hold - just a wee bit longer! LOL

It's not just Genesis 2 either. But it's their shapes and efficient parameters setup, along with new supporting shapes coming out all the time that really are pushing my heroes into the new era - But this new DAZ Studio Pro is killing me as a beneficial content creation helper toolset. I used to loathe getting models to conform. The process wasn't horribly bad, but it was nothing like it is now.

I haven't mentioned this to Holly yet - I'll need her help to pull this off - I am now planning to set up a seminar through the Cafe, to anyone who may be interested, in showing off the sheer bliss of how this all works. But I also have another one in mind that I wanted to do before that one. We'll see how it all pans out, and if there's any interest in such an event.

Update:
Added a new post about Carranimation Part 1
Optimizing Your Content – Shader Basics
, new articles at the Cafe. Hope you enjoy it!

Dartanbeck

The seminars would likely be a live streaming video event.
I still have some details to work out on my end before I can make that part happen.

mmoir

Dart,
I will have to take a look at this article, looks great.

wetcircuit

Dartanbeck said:

I haven't mentioned this to Holly yet - I'll need her help to pull this off - I am now planning to set up a seminar through the Cafe, to anyone who may be interested, in showing off the sheer bliss of how this all works. But I also have another one in mind that I wanted to do before that one. We'll see how it all pans out, and if there's any interest in such an event.

oh...

:P

Like video streaming? Ringo mentioned organizing a weekly chat, but then he disappeared again. LOL. If we can do it, let's do it!!!

Dartanbeck

...and now this one:
Carranimation Part 1 - Rotation of the Hip
A method demonstration of Character Keyframe Animation. Keeping it very simple to start and we'll get deeper as more Carranimation articles come. I hope you enjoy trying this simple method. While typing the article, I created the demonstration animation without pre-planning the animation in any way. I just needed some screenshots to help make my point. In the making of just three poses, this is the resulting test render. Interested? Follow along and give it a try.

MysticWings

All new things to me!! But I would like those live seminars!! Even if they are too advanced for me!! I can always start knowing more carrara since we are starting a long term relationship!!

Dartanbeck

Thank you for the kind words :)
Not too advanced for anyone. That would be the point.
The idea I have is that, if a relevant question pops up during the demonstration, I could show, in real time, how to solve the question.
Most of what I talk about - ever - is towards helping in the early stages of learning Carrara. Then folks like McGuyver, pgre, tbwoq, 3DAGE, and others step in when the tougher questions arise. But I try to catch all of those too, you'll notice. So I learn a lot from other folks asking questions too.

But I have come to Carrara with a vision, and poor Carrara just blew me away right off the bat. Much, much more useful than I ever could have imagined. And so I haven't ever left it alone since I first bought it, just prior to the official release of version 8. Of course, there were the hurdles to learn to cross and this community doesn't leave you guessing for long. That spirit captured my heart in a big way. I am a stone-laying landscape foreman from a small area surrounded by some of the finest fresh water on earth, and I have been into art and music my whole life. Sculpture was always my thing, especially when I got my hands on a nice chunk of alabaster. Fantasy has always been my home away from home, inside my head.

When I first got into 3D art, I learned modeling and animation from a text book, that I now gave to evilproducer, when I met him in a nearby, neighboring city last year. Since then I've opened many more books and web pages looking to learn more. I printed out the entire Carrara User Guide before I ever bought it - which I downloaded just to make sure that it had what I needed. A friend just sent me a brand new copy of Jeremy Birn's new book: Digital Lighting and Rendering - Third Edition, and I'm eagerly soaking up everything that this true master has to teach. What a blast!

So now I work on making an epic. The intention is to have many episodes of adventure - not a trilogy, or any other form that spells certain end, although it must have a grand finale somewhere...

In this endeavor, I began collecting resources. I became a Platinum Club member when I bought Carrara and have taken good advantage of that, ever expanding my collection of props, clothing, characters and gadgets. All the while creating scenes to advance my knowledge of Carrara, and how to tweak my stages so that they'll be ready for filming when I begin shooting the action. So I've spent most of my time finding ways to increase the speed of my renders while I maintain a certain level of detail that I feel will be essential to pull off my animations in a good way. I want people to really enjoy these stories and to really grow a fondness of the characters. So while I am looking for speed, I am also trying to make sure that it doesn't end up looking cheesy.

Oh my... babbling again? Yeah... guess so. My lovely wife calls me Sir Babble On... and On... and On... :) Lovingly, of course.

Anyways, in all of my efforts, I have been developing things that I thought might help others and that's how Starry Sky for Carrara came to be. Then came a collection of Dragon animations, and recently my EnvironKits for Carrara and some fantasy sword work animations for M4. I continue to try and help others with Carrara as much as I can. I'm probably quite annoying to some folks in my mission to try and answer questions. But I've seen how quickly a question can get lost in deeper pages of the forum, without ever finding an answer. So sometimes my replies are actually just projections of how I think that the author of the thread might be able to begin finding the results they're looking for. Often time they either do, or someone that really knows the answer will finally see the query and chime in. So it all comes round full circle eventually.

Now I feel that I know certain aspects of Carrara quite well - but I certainly wouldn't call myself a master of it. I'm working towards that, though! :)

MysticWings

:) I'm a "babbler" to so everything is perfect!! :)

And I love you answers to the questions... They are really helpful. Sometimes in daz section I make a question and just get really quick answers... and I end up like "ok, now let's see if I find out what are those things they told about... so after a time running the net, informing me about things they told and lots of trying and error I get there. It's not bad, it makes me go after things, but sometimes is really time consuming. And lots of time in the end it's like "ohhh, so it was just this... so simple".
Every answers you gave me (and other here as well like Macguyver, pgre and evil producer) saved me lots of time, made me understand things very good and made me go further and discover other things! It's great!!

I'm investing a lot in tutorials, but until now, was focused more on daz studio. I'm still learning lots of things in daz studio. I've made a scene (I mean really make a scene, not just playing around) in the end of last year and 2 this year. Now I'm making my third very slowly and using it to learn a lot in every steps I give, exploring more deep scene making and surfaces work, posing (it's where I am now), then cameras, lights and rendering... and so on... And of course, learning modeling at the same time. And have some more things to learn to my illustrations (some in 3d, other more in digital painting). So my next render may take a while to come, but I really like learning like this - step by step. And it's a little boring having lots of work with scenes and in the end the render not being as good as you liked cause you don't no to much about this and that... Actually, after finishing these scene I'm doing, I will take the other 2 and improve them, specially in lighting since I have here a great tutorial about lighting.

Of course there always more and more... I am really creating a big tutorial library in here... Really dived crazly on this... Sometimes is too much (I'm really grateful to my brain being caching all this) and when I want to do something again don't quite remember... but always remember in which tutorial I've learned that so that I can go there again.

See... now it's me babbling :P

And in the end, the important part - count me in!! This live seminars will help me a lot learning carrara in the middle of all this :)

Dartanbeck

Very cool! Yeah, I like to collect learning material too ;)

Dartanbeck

Another new article. This one is regarding some basics on how to perform some optimization to your Carrara shaders:

Optimizing Your Content – Shader Basics
by Carrara Enthusiast Dartanbeck